Work Text:
The air in the Los Angeles studio is thick with the scent of stale espresso and the lingering, cloves-and-asphalt aroma of Scott’s cigarettes. The atmosphere is charged with the electric, somewhat dizzying realization that Core is no longer just a collection of private sessions—it’s a public entity. A journalist from Rolling Stone sits across from the four of them, a micro-cassette recorder whirring on the low table like a plastic heartbeat.
Robert sits on the edge of a velvet sofa, his knees bouncing with a restless, rhythmic energy. Beside him, Scott is draped rather than seated, a study in calculated nonchalance and raw, nervous charisma. They are twenty-six and twenty-four, respectively, yet they carry the weight of a six-year history that predates the polished sheen of their debut. It’s a history that began in the sweaty, chaotic crowd at a Chili Peppers show in Long Beach, born of the wreckage of two failed dates and a shared realization that they were the only two people in the room who truly mattered.
The interviewer shifts their notes, pointing to the tracklist. "Let’s talk about track ten," they say. "‘Wet My Bed.’ It’s… experimental. A departure."
Dean, leaning against the doorframe with a translucent sort of coolness, lets a slow, knowing smirk spread across his face. He doesn’t look at the interviewer; he looks straight at Scott and Robert. He knows the geography of that song. He knows that the "her" in the lyrics is a thin veil—a necessary pronoun swap for a world not yet ready for the truth of the two men sitting on the sofa. He knows it’s a sonic polaroid of their life together: the messy, intimate, incense-heavy reality of a six-year bond.
Robert clears his throat, his hand instinctively reaching out to adjust the cuff of his jacket, though his eyes remain steady. "I think I played the guitars and bass on that," he says, his voice grounding the room. "It wasn't about a structured composition. It was about creating something musically that Scott had in mind—something fluid."
He remembers the day vividly. The studio lights had been dimmed to a bruised purple hue. Scott had been pacing, his movements liquid and erratic, fueled by a specific, artistic fever.
"He was very into Jim Morrison, too," Robert continues, glancing at Scott with a look that is professionally admiring but privately tender. "I think it has a very Morrison-esque kind of a feel to it—that spoken-word, stream-of-consciousness vulnerability. For us, it wasn't a 'statement' song. It was just another little passing thing that we were trying to be artistic with to go from song to song. That’s about it."
But for Robert, it isn't just artistic. It was a translation. Every distorted note he coaxed from the strings was a response to the way Scott moved in their shared apartment. The "clean sheets" and "fluffy pillows" aren't metaphors; they're the mundane details of a domestic life they had built since those early days in Long Beach. In the studio, Robert had used his bass to build a fence around Scott’s voice, protecting the intimacy of the performance even as they recorded it for the world.
Dean lets out a short, dry laugh, crossing his arms over his chest. He remembers the lockout session differently—less like a recording and more like an intrusion he chose to avoid.
"I was not in the room for that," Dean says, his smirk deepening as he catches Scott’s eye. Scott offers a tiny, defiant tilt of his chin. "I could hear through the wall that something was going on, but the door was shut. Tight."
Dean had walked past the heavy soundproof door and felt the vibrations. It hadn't sounded like a band working through a bridge or a chorus.
The interviewer adjusts his glasses, leaning closer to the recording device as he examines the lyric sheet for "Wet My Bed." He looks between Scott and Robert, his brow furrowed with the earnest, slightly clinical curiosity of a journalist trying to find a deep, metaphorical meaning in a song about soiled linens.
"The track feels incredibly... visceral," the journalist notes, tapping his pen against his pad. "There’s a sense of exhaustion in the vocal. Was the 'her' in the song a specific muse? It feels like you’re capturing the aftermath of a very chaotic, perhaps even destructive, relationship."
Dean lets out a sharp, sudden bark of a laugh that he quickly masks by coughing into his hand. He catches Robert’s eye, and for a split second, a flash of pure, unadulterated mischief passes between them. Dean knows exactly why the door was shut. He knows why the "Morrison-esque" atmosphere required a complete lack of witnesses and a very specific kind of physical exertion. Robert shifts on the sofa, his thigh pressing firmly against Scott’s. He clears his throat, his expression a mask of professional gravity that belies the heat rising in his neck.
"It was definitely about a specific kind of energy," Robert says, his voice carefully level. "We wanted to capture the sound of being... completely spent. Musically and physically. It wasn't about destruction, though. It was about the mess you make when you're entirely focused on the moment."
The interviewer nods, scribbling 'Themes of hedonistic nihilism' in the margins of his notebook.
"Exactly," Scott chimes in, his voice dropping into that low, smoky register that always seems to make the room feel smaller. He leans back, draping an arm across the top of the sofa, his fingers hovering just inches from the nape of Robert's neck. "We weren't looking for a clean take. We wanted the grit. The 'incense and fluffy pillows'—that's the setup, right? But the reality is always more... tangled. By the time the tape was rolling, we were just trying to catch our breath."
Eric smirks, staring down at his boots. He remembers the silence that had followed the recording—the way the red 'In Use' light had stayed on for a good twenty minutes after the music stopped, and how Robert had eventually emerged looking slightly disheveled, adjusting his bass strap with a suspiciously focused intensity.
"You can hear the intimacy," the interviewer says, sounding pleased with his own insight. "It’s almost like the listener is intruding on a private breakdown."
"Something like that," Dean mutters, his eyes dancing with the secret. "I think 'intruding' is the right word. That’s why I stayed in the hallway. Some things are better left to the people in the room."
The journalist smiles, oblivious to the heavy, knowing tension vibrating between the four men. He thinks he’s writing a piece about the artistic angst of a rising rock star; he has no idea he’s actually documenting the muffled sounds of a six-year anniversary celebration that just happened to take place in a vocal booth.
"It’s definitely a bold choice for a debut," the interviewer concludes, moving on to the next track.
Scott catches Robert’s hand beneath the fold of his jacket, squeezing his fingers. Robert squeezes back, a small, private smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. They let the reporter keep his metaphors and his "musical departures." They’ll keep the truth—and the memory of the "clean sheets" they eventually had to change when they finally got home to their own bed.
Dean had leaned his head against the drywall for a second, hearing the low hum of Robert’s bass and the rhythmic, hypnotic quality of Scott’s voice. It felt heavy with a secret history—the kind of history that involves six years of navigating the LA music scene hand in hand while the rest of the world saw them as just bandmates. Dean respected the closed door. He knew when a moment belonged to the music, and when it belonged to the two men making it.
Eric leans forward, energized by the track's technical weirdness. To him, the song is a collage of sensory data, a weirdly beautiful mess of found sounds and spontaneous ego. "If you listen carefully, you hear us whispering in the background," Eric says, gesturing with his hands as if mixing the air. "Me and Dean eventually crept back in toward the end, or were just messing around while they tracked the vocals. We were reading from magazines—just random bits of text to create this layer of static, this social noise. It was just like, ‘This sounds so weird.’"
He laughs, a genuine, bright sound that cuts through the pretension of the room. "And I believe Scott said, ‘We sound like the fuckin’ Beatles in there.’ Just totally gone into the experimental rabbit hole." Eric mimics the motion of flicking a lighter. "That’s the best part of the track for me—the realism. You hear him smoking right up to the microphone. The flick of the Bic, the sharp inhale, the actual sound of the paper burning down. It’s so close, it’s like he’s sitting in your lap."
What Eric doesn't say—what he perhaps only senses—is that the cigarette wasn't a prop. It was the post-coital punctuation mark the song demanded. The lyrics ask, “And where’s my cigarette?” because, in the life Scott and Robert share, that is the ritual. The song is a celebration of the "soiled" moments, the exhaustion of love, and the quiet, hazy comedown that follows.
Scott finally stirs, his rings clinking against the glass of water on the table. He looks at the interviewer, his eyes hooded and dark, flickering with a mixture of exhaustion and immense pride. He thinks about the civil union he wants to have with Robert—a quiet, legal tether in a world that still demands he say "her" on a record.
"We were in there for a couple of hours," Scott says, his voice a low, melodic rasp. "It started as a joke, almost. A spur-of-the-moment idea to capture a mood we were feeling in the house. We wanted to see if we could bottle that specific kind of… domestic static."
He shifts his weight, his shoulder brushing against Robert’s. It’s a brief contact, but it’s loaded with the weight of half a decade.
"It turned from a whim into what we’re now hearing on the record," Scott concludes, his gaze drifting to the window where the LA sun is beginning to dip toward the horizon. "It’s a transition. It’s the breath you take before the next heavy hit. It’s messy, it’s honest, and it’s exactly how it felt to be in that room."
The interviewer nods, scribbling furiously. They see a "Morrison-esque" filler track. They see a band being "artistic." But across the table, Dean sees the truth, Eric sees the craft, and Robert and Scott see each other—two men who met at a punk show in Long Beach and ended up carving their private devotion into the wax of a multi-platinum record, one whispered lyric at a time.